Games Art: 2D Pathway - Environment (M4/4)

One of the last two requirements of the Art Pack in the 2D pathway, was to create a model sheet (turnaround) and a final piece (detailed image).

Above is my final model sheet of my part vehicle/part environment scene. I decided on including a front, side, top down (birds eye view) and a back view. In addition, amongst the other graphical elements, are measurements of the heights, widths and lengths of certain objects; such as the ship and dry dock platform. I really enjoyed aligning components to scale and proportion. Moreover, this would then aid a modeller if it was to be made into 3D.

Here is my final render made in Maya's plugin, mental ray. To get the right composition was a tough choice, as I wanted to get several elements into place and direct the field of view towards the focus that is the colossal anti-gravity ship in centre. I looked through several shipping and dockyard environments on Google Images before I came across one of a dry dock in Portsmouth. As I am from the historical naval city, it seemed odd that I did not think of this setting at first (one that I am very familiar with of in the dockyard).

Above are several of the photographs I took on my travels and in my free time to use for my digital work. For example, a range of metal surfaces that I then cropped and shaped to fit certain aspects of the ships etc. After this, I then played around with the blending options in Photoshop to get the best result.

This is the step by step progress of my final piece. As it was only a simple paint over of my 3D render, there are just four shots but it is clear where I have adjusted certain areas. It was really interesting looking back on this at the different stages and the improvements I applied. I attempted to focus my time management as correctly as possible between certain aspects of the art pack requirements. However, I feel I could have spent less time on my variation compositions (regarding detail) and more time on my final piece.

Lastly, this is my final piece paint-over of my previous rendered image. I made sure to use a unique colour palette, not only because of the interesting tones but to capture the elements and mood of the futuristic state of the depleted and desperate world (in my game idea I made the content around). 

Furthermore, I found several weaknesses in my work as regards to painting proportions and large scaled 'hard surfaced' objects. To challenge and overcome this obstacle, I studied in-depth at how to use guidelines and visualise space (of the immense) through real-life examination. In other words, on my travels, in London for example, I looked at buildings etc from afar and their sizes to other bodies surrounding them (jotting mental notes and small doodles/sketches).

Overall, I believe I have refined my practices in both the digital medium as well as in my practical (sketchbook studies) while exploring my ideas revolving around present nautical and future freight transportation, through in-depth research, to the best of my ability.

Winter Submission: Triple A Asset Production - Re-submission UPDATE

For the previous Winter Submission, there were many mistakes and issues I made. This built up to me not being able to have enough time to place my gun in Quixel as well as the Unreal 4 Engine for the deadline hand-in. Fortunately, the first submission was classed as a 'formative' meaning we could re-submit our work with any updates for a re-mark.

I took this opportunity to add in the work I did not get the chance to do in the previous term. The only problem I had to work out, was my time management around my other deadlines and work.

Above and before are some TURTLE renders I created in Maya. I used a low light and contrast to capture the detail and surface variations. In the image above, I removed one of the arcing petals on the barrel to show the work I did on the inside of the gun (which would then open up like a flower for the 'firing mode', if I were to animate it).

On placing my gun and all the components that I baked in xNormals into Quixel, I realised that there were quite a few problems with the normal maps and ambient occlusions such as on the centre stock part seen above.

Quixel allows the user to preview all of the textures and applied materials in the 3DO viewer through the keyboard shortcut (of pressing the numbered keys 1 to 5). Here I have just compiled all of the modes together to compare my practice test. I found this out with some other tips through reading the Quixel online manual at:

http://quixel.se/usermanual/quixelsuite/doku.php?id=3do_hotkeys

Here are the cables at the rear base of my gun model in selected view in Quixel.

I experimented with the size and other variables in the inspector tab to get the best looking textures possible (in this case, the size of the leather effect on the handle of the gun).

I was really pleased with the test outcome above and how powerful Quixel really is (plug-in with Photoshop). For this one, I added on the 'Optimus Prime' material which gave an interesting scratched metal effect on the petal ends.

From adding in my model and its four parts into Quixel (top handle, centre stock, rear cables and the barrel petal ends) I could judge how much time I needed to fix my mistakes and then progress up to placing it in a scene in Unreal.

Likewise with Quixel, I placed my model into Unreal and experimented with placing the materials onto the gun, to decide and also learn how to use/harness certain aspects of the software's; in time for the re-submission hand-in. 

Here I placed my different maps into their corresponding material nodes. I enjoyed placing these in and looking into the different channels and their basic uses such as for emissive lighting.

I made sure to organise my separate maps into their representative asset folders with that part of the gun (four folders).

Here I have displayed clearly my worst map of the stock part that needed correcting. I believe that I baked, not knowing I had changed the original obj UV map layout, after combining several parts together in Maya. This resulted in UV faces not aligning where they should be.

From working with Maya more closely, overtime, I have learned and understood more elements from independent learning. That being said, I have also had a fair amount of help from some tutorials such as that on the main Quixel website at:

http://quixel.se/hub/tutorial/uv-mapping-for-the-suite/

Understanding the UV layout editor in Maya better, has definitely helped with my work flow and method of producing the best possible results. Above is the wires in the centre stock part of my gun (that I focused on mainly as a thing to fix). It is quite clear to see how the surface of the UV's are wrong, but the unwrapping process to make them right would be something that I had not yet done (a cylindrical unwrap or automatic unwrap would not suffice).

I was able to find an excellent tutorial on YouTube (see link below) on how to unwrap a curved pipe manually. By forming a seam along the length of the tube and then cutting the UV's. I was able to then unfold vertically and to give a decent even layout, I used the unfold UV tool in the UV Editor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dahgVetfUZg

After around seven hours of resizing all the faces and correcting the scale in the Editor, I was able to complete the new UV's for the centre stock which was one of the main issues.

Here I have a before and after of the difference in the unwrap of the stock on the gun. As I was pushed for time last term, this was one of the reasons the UV's were messy. However, after working on other projects and models in Maya, I have more experience in the way they are laid out then I did before and so was able to work to the best of my ability and successfully overall.

As I had re-done the low poly models UV's in Maya, this meant I had to re-bake my guns normals and ambient occlusion maps for the stock part in xNormals.

Since last using Quixel, many updates have been applied improving performance and optimisation of things like the 3DO viewer. I selected in a white box above, the way Quixel orders my separate four components neatly. This allowed for a simple method of selection when it came to adding on the material texture.

Here is the final material called 'Galvanized Metal' that I used for the stock from the material library. I was really pleased with the clean result and how the UV's turned out with a texture on it as a whole.

One of the final stages for the re-submission was to place my gun model in a scene in Unreal. Here I attached the petal end maps to the right nodes; as like in the previously mentioned.

For some reason, the texture and ambient occlusion maps appeared very dark when I placed them on the model parts and pressed test play. This resulted in the stock on the model in the scene view to look black; rather than a shiny metallic finish. To counter this, I simply bumped up the brightness to 5 on both the albedo and ambient occlusion maps on the adjustments panel in the Editor which surprisingly worked.

The Unreal build required us to set up a sort of diorama scene showcasing the model. I decided to go on a simple sci-fi vibe (following the background of the gun) and set it up like it were being examined with side lights projecting onto it.

I placed a few tall pillars around the outside of the gun (in centre) and made a thin tall rectangle to represent fluorescent tube lamps which I then duplicated and placed on the pillars. Although, I had a try independently at emissive placement on an objects material (with no success); I was able to find a fantastic, quick and easy to understand tutorial, of how to apply a Multiply expression to the emissive colour (which is different to the more familiar Unity engine) to make an emissive glow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtyNXjN_HFk

I was quite pleased with the emissive lighting procedure and think it added an interesting cinematic element to the scene. Above is the material layout with a simple glow (before I added a light neon blue colour to the emission).

In addition to the emissive light panels, I added in some spot lights and also changed the time of day by rotating the skybox to create a dramatic effect for the sci-fi feel.

Above is a screenshot in-game of the final scene. A last minute feature I added into the build, was to make the gun look like it was levitating via a magnetic levitation display. I would have liked to have had more time and include things like a script that rotated the gun slowly around 360° and wobbled slightly over time; for a realism touch.

Overall, I am happy with how I have recovered this project from its major complications and issues (and also not knowing my own limitations before). On the other hand, we learn a lot from our mistakes and I definitely found out some these and tried to the best of my ability to rectify them.

Games Production - Spring Submission (M5/5)

Towards our final hand-in and alongside wrapping up texturing the models for our game, I looked at particle effects and the best visual optimisation possible. 

Here I have made a camp fire for the start of our game in the forest. I made my own customized image of a flame that could be inverted as a translucent file in a material shader.

I played around with various settings in the inspector to get the real-time movement of the flames right; as well as the scale. While making all of the textures and models I was not thinking about the end result and how it may make the game run slower. Above is one of the processes that helped with the particle effects. By using the stats feature I could check things like the games FPS which adjusted to a reasonable fifty eight (after reducing the amount of max particles from one thousand down to two hundred).

In Unity's Standard Assets package, is a water prefab I used for our lake and river (suggested by a fellow student). This allowed me change various settings (in no time at all) to get a moving plane texture to transition with another on loop; producing the illusion of running water. I enjoyed playing around with this and would love to experiment with this in the future.

One practise I followed was organising my folders into an easy to read order (scenes, models, textures, materials and scripts). As a group we decided on a day and night cycle for our game. This entailed a lot of fiddling with a rotation script to get the right timing (as well as the time included to get around the Vertical Slice). Here I added in a directional light acting as the moon in the hierarchy, on to that of the standard directional light sun. While being on an opposite direction on the axis, when the sun goes down the moon comes up. 

Above is the cart wagon UV unwrapped in Maya. The player encounters this crashed on its side in the game. I enjoyed trying to work out features that were more important and recognisable to keep when it came to building at a low stylized topology.

Here I have the wagon in-game in Unity with the textures applied that I made in Photoshop, exported as a TGA file and placed on as material shader.

As our game is an RPG with turn based combat, I had to model a set of dice. After the modelling stage I knew I would have to spend a fair amount of texturing and to help with the medieval theme, I put together some font ideas for the numbers on the dice.

Eventually I went for the second to last font in the previous image (Sanvito Pro) and positioned all of the numbers for the D6, D8, D12 and D20 dice.

I dropped the four dice in to the test scene I built in Unity to play around with the lighting emission for the die (each dice illuminates softly as a light source for the player to navigate at night).

I was really pleased with the results above of a barrel I modelled, unwrapped and textured. I was able to do all of this in under forty minutes. After practise on all of the other assets, I knew the stages required to create the barrel quickly and efficiently.

In our game is a small village with several houses in. Here I have unwrapped a Tavern as accurately as I can (with the building stages behind the highlighted).

As I placed the houses into the game, I realised that it did not feel alive. To help make an atmosphere, I made a watermill building so I could animate a wheel rotation in simple code (as seen above). After a few errors within Maya with axis orientation, I was able to get the wheel to spin on the centre point and I was really satisfied with the results overall.

In addition to the atmospheric elements, I made a torch light particle effect and a smoking chimney emission. Although I looked at a few tutorials for smoke, I was able to tweak the lifetime to last long enough to fade at the right height elevation. However, there were a few problems with positioning and I also made sure to debug the environment (become aware of the collision mesh/ nav mesh issues etc).

These are the two images I made to generate the texture for the particle systems. The Photoshop 'cut-out' effect was a popular feature throughout each texture I made and helped promote the three layered 'stylised' approach we were aiming for. 

As I had to work from my own designs (issues revolving around the Concept Artist) a lot of the time for the environment, I worked from reference images of my own or from my own knowledge. However, there were a few designs, towards the end of the project, that I could use such as the weapon sheet above (Concept Artist's work) I used as a template for the characters swords and enemy mace.

The castle ruins, situated at the end of our vertical slice, took longer than expected and I had to manually position several dozen vertices that did not want to flow well with the UV map.

Here is an early build of our game with the nav mesh re-baked. Assigning all of the models materials and sizing within the exported unity package took many many hours but the results paid off. While we were importing all of our groups work into a single organised build, I made sure to organise structures in the same order that I built my models; following a list that I had made on paper.

Something I regret not checking was the object sizes to the 4K resolution textures I used through out the map. For example, something like the ruins needed a 4K texture (4096 x 4096 pixels), whereas the small torch posts did not need that sort of size file. If I was able to go back I would have definitely improved this area of my work for an efficient running and less memory taken up build.

Above and in the previous image are screen shots of our game with occlusion culling (suggested to me by a group member). This fantastic feature, that I thought would be very time consuming, enables and disables rendering objects to help with frame rate and increases a games performance; which we needed after combining several dozen scripts and UI etc. Unity's manual overview was very clearly laid out and it took me no time to customise the tool and bake for our game.

I took quite a large collection of photographs to use for texturing in and around Farnham (a town with quite a few post-medieval buildings and environments). For many of the images such as the wood, I used a few effects in Photoshop to make the 'cut-out' stylized effect seen on the right side of the image overhead.

One of our limitations of the unit was a a total polygon triangle count of 300,000. To accurately measure that I was on track with this, I added into a scene afterwards all of the OBJ & FBX files (55). In total, our low poly stylized environment only came to 57,371 (without the duplicated objects).

I have had a lot of challenges in the environment building and have learned that going back over something can sometimes be more efficient such as in the topology flow. I attempted to construct the world to the best of my ability in our stylized theme; while following the concept art as closely as possible. Above is a before and after side by side of the first build with very simple elements, to the second to last, with almost all the assets in place. Overall, I enjoyed working in a different style to my normal work and strived to make the game look and feel good all in all.